Keep ’em laughing

Andy Cottrell doesn’t like gimmicks. But there’s one freebee his customers at Mr. Bagel in Westbrook are sure to get every time they come into his store – entertainment from Cottrell himself.

Whether he’s challenging one of his employees to carry a raw egg across the restaurant with chopsticks or testing his customers’ knowledge with trivia questions, he won’t let his patrons leave without smiles on their faces.

“To get through these tough times, you’ve got to feel what they’re feeling,” he said.

Cottrell doesn’t care if people are coming in for a hearty lunch or just a cup of coffee. He always makes sure they get more than their money’s worth with his antics.

“You make them laugh,” he said.

Cottrell’s repertoire of tricks includes juggling eggs, spinning soup pans on his fingers and guessing where people bought their clothes. And if all else fails, he said, he just makes fun of himself.

“I love my customers to death,” he said, and by making sure they always feel like they’re the most important person in his restaurant, he knows they’ll keep coming back.

“I really want to see them happy,” he said.

Heating up sales

When Peter Hart’s brother suggested he save money by buying an infrared heater for his home, he had no idea how much cash it would put back in his pocket.

After seeing first-hand how well the heaters worked, Hart, who owns the Vacuum Doctor in Westbrook and North Windham, started selling them himself.

The product, which Hart described as “a little furnace,” expends 1 kilowatt of electricity an hour, which he said is “very efficient.”

At the price of $400-$500, Hart said his customers can pay back the purchase with savings on their heating bills in just two months.

Hart started selling the heaters in June and saw sales start spiking in August, when oil prices were at their worst and people starting becoming fearful of what would happen in the winter.

Once strictly a purveyor of vacuums and related products, Hart is selling an average of 30 heaters a month, and those sales are carrying his business.

“I’ve got people who’ve bought their second and third ones,” he said, and they’ve sent their friends and relatives into the store, too.

But Hart doesn’t only rely on his customers to spread the word. He has an employee run his Westbrook shop every Wednesday so he can get out into the community and hand out fliers.

“You can’t just sit down and cry,” Hart said about difficult times for small businesses. “You’ve got to go out and do something different.”